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Japan was a long haul flight, but Bubbles had no qualms about travelling by air. The higher the better as far as he was concerned. He missed the jungle and her majestic trees after all. He was quite content to sip on leaf green smoothies while awake, watch Tarzan movies and scoff at the acting abilities of Cheetah on his iPad when bored, or cover his eyes with his blindfold when he required sleep.

There were times however, when an over-enthusiastic fellow passenger spoiled that well-laid out schedule and made him long for an eject button that wouldn’t decompress the cabin and send the entire plane spiralling to its doom.

Bubbles was reading a copy of the Observant, smiling at the front page story of an Octopus escape from the Belfast Marine Institute, astutely trying to ignore the chatterbox next to him, who was astutely refusing to be ignored.

“…. And then I said well if you are going to be like that about it. And he said, I’ll be anyway I like about it! She’s my woman after all….”

The patience of a sloth would have been tested, Bubbles thought to himself. And given that dodging a hail of misaimed bullets was looking a damn sight more appealing than the next 12 hours of sitting next to this… On a Blue Bonobo’s Beard, they hadn’t even left Heathrow airport’s tarmac yet!

So Bubbles did the only polite thing an ape in his position could do. The only fit response of an ape in complete control of his intestinal gut flora.

He guffed.

Not loudly, quite soundlessly in fact (an advantage of not having arse cheeks). Not obviously (an advantage of being endowed with a directional sphincter muscle). But right on target. Bubbles let one rip that would have floored a rampaging hyena.

The man next to him stalled in his verbal equivalent of what Bubbles had just ejected from his backside. His eyes widened for a moment before he passed out while in the meantime, our subterfuge simian attracted the attention of a member of cabin crew to request a cool glass of his favourite green blended beverage.

He raised his glass to his unconscious fellow passenger. “Pleasant dreams,” he whispered with a smile.

Bubbles O’Seven will return in You Only Swing Twice. Kickstarter rebooting on 7th October 7pm BST.